Hell's Corner

Hell’s Corner has an opening that is among the most stupid I’ve read from David Baldacci. These conspiracy, high politics, spy, thriller, action, superhero without supernatural powers, novels do require you to give the author some freedom, but there are limits to what can be pushed through even the widest gate.

The book starts with the president secretly summoning Oliver Stone and requesting that he, with no further information, take on the Russia controlled Mexican drug cartels because nobody else could do it. So without a passport, and with no money, Oliver Stone accepts the mission and goes home to practice his Russian.

Shortly afterwards, when visiting Lafayette Park, Oliver Stone witnesses an assassination attempt which show more interrupts his plan to walk to Mexico and Russia. Instead, the top levels of American and British intelligence decide to give Oliver Stone extraordinary powers to figure out the assassination attempt, because it’s clearly not the role of the Secret Service, or FBI, or the police, or MI6 or CIA. Clearly.

At this time in the book, which is still very early, I was so close to just closing it and throwing it in the bin as pure trash, but for good and bad, I’m a completionist and I decided to put my trust in the rest of the book being better or it would never have been released. That trust has been breached before (Robert Jordan, you know what you did), but surely the editors would have told Baldacci if the whole book was rubbish?

Sadly the book continued being littered with factually wrong statements and plot arcs that went far beyond where Baldacci should have gone.

As an example of one of the stupid factual errors: A bomb expert tells Stone that the dogs can smell all explosives and goes on to explain how smell molecules can penetrate glass and metal since they are totally different from gas molecules and other molecules. Big eye roll. Baldacci’s bomb expert should have kept quiet instead of exposing his ignorance.

There are no "smell molecules", just normal molecules our smell receptors happen to be able to react to. For instance the smell of rotten egg is Hydrogen Sulfide, H2S, a pretty ordinary gas.

The reason dogs can often smell well encapsulated packages is that molecules escape during packaging. Imagine packaging an active sprinkler in a water saturated room without getting the outside of the package wet. It is not easy.

And glass and metals are typically not permeable to gasses, ”smell gasses” or other gasses. Vacuum bottles would have a hard time otherwise.


And then there is the scene where a MI-6 agent randomly pushes pulls her weapon and puts it on a civilian’s forehead to make a point. That is so unprofessional that it’s beyond belief. That is how accidents happen. I was surprised nobody attacked her, and maybe killed her, at that point, but apparently the super fast reactions of the Camel Club was temporarily on hold at that moment.

In summary, the book feels like a lot of different pieces of a book, and story, hammered into place disregarding that while the pieces by themselves look nice, they don’t actually fit with the others, and skipping the fact check part of the authoring process.

While I'm not considering Baldacci a great author, I usually still enjoy his novels as competent action thrillers. This book is a great disappointment. show less

First let me clarify that David Baldacci is incapable of writing a "bad" or mediocre book...but some are just more compressive and easier to get involved in than others. This book had so many possible bad guys and so many alphabet government agencies going after poor Oliver Stone and MI6 agent Mary Chapman that it became a muddle attempt to keep up with it all. There were some very exciting parts...the characters were excellent and well drawn...even the minor ones. The thing that was rather disappointing about the entire story was that Oliver's friends that comprise "The Camel Club" and had helped him throughout the other 4 books, were nearly absent until almost the very end of this one. These people are what made this series so good show more should have been treated better in this last book of the series. Still worthy of 4 star rating but if I had never read any of the other books I don't believe I could have given it this rating. show less

Geriatric super-hero John Carr/Oliver Stone teams up with an agent of MI6, and mostly leaves out the rest of the Camel Club, to investigate an assassination attempt on the British Prime Minister. After having said in my review of the previous book in this series how nice it was that the Camel Club and friends have become like family to each other, we've reached the point where the alpha-dad-hero wants to protect the rest of his family by not involving them in his dangerous activities. The book suffered due to this as the best parts of the others of this series was how each member of the team had his or her strengths and contributed to the action.

This is what I call "beach reads for men" or "dude lit" (like, as opposed to "chick lit" show more get it?) This stuff is no more realistic than your average romance novel, but somehow gets treated with much, much more gravitas? Oh, well. The characters, especially the Camel Club themselves, were entertaining and the plot was suspenseful. A quick read even considering the relatively prolific amount of pages. show less

Classic Baldacci! David Baldacci is the master of this adventure genre and Hell's Corner doesn't disappoint. I am fortunate to have started with the first Camel Club book so I have followed Oliver Stone's exploits with each new release. Hell's Corner keeps up Baldacci's fast paced format with plenty of plot twists.

In my other postings for Baldacci's books I make the point that his books are not fine literature but if you're interested in an adventure shoot'em up requiring some suspension of conspiracy theory reality, then Hell's Corner is for you.

The Camel Club books are best appreciated when read in their chronological sequence because of references to previous events. Though, Baldacci does provide a couple of sentence summaries with show more the references if you haven't read the previous books. show less

Oliver Stone is back in David Baldacci's final Camel Club novel, Hell's Corner. Oliver is asked back into service by the President, but on the way there he is nearly killed in a bombing very close to the White House. Since he was almost one of the casualties, Oliver decides to find out who was nearly able to kill both the President and the British prime minister in this presumed terrorist attack.

The next day, he gets a new partner from Britian’s MI6 named Mary Chapman. What follows is a very complex plot line involving Mexican druglords, Russian cartels, spies, and a traitor.

Despite the solid pacing and interesting angle, I missed the rest of the Camel Club members. They eventually join the hunt, but very minimally. There's a ton of show more new characters, none of them quite as interesting. What makes the series so wonderful is the eclectic mix of characters in the Camel Club who are so loyal to one another.

The story was not mesmerizing, especially the first half. Stone, the most revered assassin in U.S. history, made lots of errors. He doesn't ever make tactical mistakes so I found this a bit unbelievable.

The Camel Club is a great series and, while this had a convoluted ending, it was still very good. This isn't a series that can be read out of order but it's filled with great moments. I definitely recommend starting with [b:The Camel Club|15158|The Camel Club (Camel Club, #1)|David Baldacci|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1166671032l/15158._SY75_.jpg|2571396] and enjoy these fabulous characters. show less

According to President Brennan, the Russians are forcing out the Mexican drug cartels and taking over the distribution of drugs in the US. At least, this is what Oliver Stone, a.k.a. John Carr, is told when Brennan asks Oliver to rejoin society and track down the Russian operatives. Since Oliver is always looking for a way to ease his guilt for his service in the legendary "Triple Six" military group, he reluctantly agrees. But, before Stone can begin investigations, a bomb goes off in Lafayette Park (at the infamous Hell's Corner) across from the white house without seeming to target anyone. Was it the Russians? And to what purpose? The plot gets very complicated from here. Stone's efforts are aided by an M-16 operative named Mary show more Chapman, the FBI, CIA, NIC, and just about every law enforcement agency in the country, trying to track down the culprits, yet every lead dead ends. There's a lot of action as agents and civilians die. Even the other members of the Camel Club are drawn in and put at risk. Unfortunately, two-thirds into this book, the plot stalls as Oliver and his team chase their tails in an unending failure to see what's right in front of them. When the story finally picks up, it takes Stone, Chapman, Harry Finn, Joe Knox, Caleb, and Annabelle into the secret Murder Mountain training facility to face the ultimate villain. Some of the plot is entirely implausible, but this author's wonderful characters and excellent storytelling bring this story home with a shocking end. show less

I've read all Baldacci's novels in this series. This is the most tedious and convoluted of them all. Impossibly over-intricate - and needlessly so. I hope this is the end of it. (Surprisingly I also found several typos and punctuation errors.) That said, Baldacci is a marvelous writer.